Hatefuck
by SarahFromHell
Summary: 'But then, love was never anything but a word we used to manipulate people so maybe if we really truly hate each other enough it will mean something.' S/K
1. Hell

So it's come to this. Telling Annette I love her as we fall asleep in each other's arms, sending her off to dreamland with a tender kiss on the forehead as I've done every night since we got married, then texting you in the middle of the night making plans to "work late" tomorrow because as much as I care about her and don't want to hurt her et cetera, I am an addict and feeding my addiction matters more.

You meet me at the door of the hotel room. It's a cheap dirty motel off the NJ turnpike, we both could afford far better but this is an affair and I suppose you find it fitting that our trysts should be held somewhere similar to the kind of sex we have, tawdry and dirty and cheap. It's also a convenient way of signaling that you don't care too much about me. That I don't deserve to have enough money spent on me to book a room with fine linen sheets and a jacuzzi. Tonight you're dressed in full classic whore ensemble, push-up lace bra that lets the nipples peek out, g-string, garter belt and ultrasheer stockings. All La Perla, all black. You vary the outfits some but those two things never change. Get your ass on the bed, I say. My voice is cold. You jump on, twist around until you're posed to show off both tits and ass to perfection, and taunt me: Can you handle this? I get on top of you, slap the smirk off your face, and you snake your hand down into my pants and we then proceed to destroy each other. We don't call it that though. We call it sex.

With Annette that first time I was gentle, the way you are with someone who's weaker, precious girl breakable as fine china, little porcelain doll baby. You're more delicate than she is physically, thin with tiny feet and fine small bird bones, but I _know_ you. And so I bite you so hard I draw blood, smack your ass hard, grab your ass and tits with enough force to leave bruises, gag you on my cock until I feel the bile rise up in your throat. And you don't care. You like it rough. When you're on top of me you take your revenge, hand on my neck cutting off my air supply and smiling while you do it, nails leaving red marks on my chest, grinding on me until my hips are desperately sore and you know I'm in pain so you do it harder. Hate fuck. But then, love was never anything but a word we used to manipulate people so maybe if we really truly hate each other enough it will mean something.

We reconnected about a year ago. It was at the after party for _Vogue's_ new fall season spread. I was there as a photographer. You were there with your husband. An Italian fashion designer. Handsome, in an unimaginative Ken doll sort of way. He told me the story of how you two first met. He'd fallen in love at first sight and pulled out all the stops to seduce you: trips to Tahiti, Paris, Milan, to the family estate where his Nonna made you her signature homemade spaghetti sauce and the rest of his relatives gathered round to proclaim you beautiful, charming, a perfect match for him. Everything his treat, even though you were making far more money than he was. The youngest female hedge fund manager in Wall Street's history, gossip pages called you the Lady Shark. Just then the head of a modeling agency came by and gave you and your husband a big air-kissy greeting and dragged him away from our table to talk shop, the husband left you there with me without a care in the world, and I knew right then that he had not the slightest idea who you really were. Unless you'd changed drastically in the years we hadn't seen each other, which seemed unlikely. If anything, you looked even harder-edged than the girl who'd tried to kill me when we were still in high school. I asked you why you married him.

"Because I love him," you said sweetly.

"That's very nice. So really, why did you marry him?"

"Well, he's handy for keeping the other men away. You know, there are rumors about his family." There weren't, I found out later—you were just making a dumb Italian joke. "Anyway, I could ask you the same question."

"It's because he loves me," Annette broke in. She'd been sitting at our table for a while, looking small and out of place, even though she'd been the one begging me to take her to this event, to invite her girlfriends to this event, which I'd done. She'd said she wanted to see the new fall fashions, which was fine, but as a civilian, she didn't know anyone here, wasn't really necessary to this party and knew it. She wasn't a celebrity; she was the punchline to "sorry girls he's taken," when the magazines profiled me.

I think of your husband sometimes, when I'm with Annette. When I'm with you I never think of him. Or of her, or anyone else. When we're together there's no room for anyone else. The hotel room seems to shrink, closing us in. It's Hell but it's what we chose. The first time I came here, I told you it wouldn't happen again. You didn't say anything, just watched me as I put on my clothing and smiled because you knew it was a lie.

Once you screamed out your husband's name at climax, just to piss me off. I got off you and gathered up my clothes. I'm sorry, you said, it's just that he's the love of my life and I really do miss him...

And I love my wife, I said. I think this was a mistake for both of us.

I stood by the door, looked at your naked body, didn't go out.

After about a minute, you got up and led me back to the bed.

After we're done fucking you'll kick me out, say you've got other more important things to do, but if I happen to forget something at the motel and come back you'll still be there, watching bad TV and smoking a cigarette while sitting tangled up in the dirty sheets. Like it's the hotel room you're really attracted to. Or like you'd rather hang out in sheets stained with my cum than deal with me directly. One time I called your bluff, held you down on the bed and told you neither of us was going anywhere. You pretended to struggle and then we fucked again. Afterwards it was the same. Fuck me or get out. Fine for me to come back and hold you down and play some sick pretend rape game but never to just hold you, never to just lie there in the bed together and relax over bad TV or even maybe have an honest conversation, actually talk about our lives and what we're doing and what's really going on. After all, there's no real reason for either of us to be here. We're both married and if it comes to that we can both find people to have affairs with somewhere else. So _why_, then...?


	2. Inevitable

_Little bitch. I didn't expect you to turn up. Somewhere deep in my heart (that thing everybody thinks I don't have), I always knew Sebastian would come back into my life, spewing insults or begging me for another fuck. But what the hell was a fundamentalist hick from Kansas doing at a prime New York fashion show? Not much, unsurprisingly. You cornered me in the ladies room, probably hoping to catch me powdering my nose, which I don't do anymore, thank you. Told me how happy you were I'd found true love with Andrea._

"_I always thought you weren't really capable of love. I imagined that if you ever got with someone seriously it would be some screwed-up relationship with an equally screwed-up person, the kind where you're just using each other for sex and bickering all the time. But seeing you and Andrea together, you look like you absolutely adore each other. I guess I misjudged you, and I'm glad I did. I think we all turned out better than anybody would've thought looking at us in high school."_

_Yeah, well. About that._

_By that time, mind you, we'd already talked as two couples over the complimentary champagne, Andrea going on about his latest designs while Sebastian ate me up with his eyes. He'd introduced you to Andrea with the hackneyed phrase: "I married my high school sweetheart." That's what the world believes now, I suppose. Under the table, he ran his foot along the inside of my thigh. Sebastian's very good at hiding such things, so you never noticed._

_A few days later, we met in a hotel room and fucked for the first time in years. It was inevitable._

_The first time it happened he said it would be just a one time thing, but we've been seeing each other regularly for almost a year now. He says I'm an evil manipulative bitch and he hates me but is addicted to me at the same time. I'm the whore in his madonna/whore complex, the one person on earth he can still hurt without disturbing his precious conscience. I let him hurt me; in fact, I encourage it. I watch him sink deeper and deeper. I watch him fall._

_Understand: we're not really rivals. To use that term would imply that we both want Sebastian. You want the facsimile of Sebastian, the fairy story he tells at bedtime to the little girl you still are and I never was. And me? I don't know what I want._

_I hold his cock in my hand and stare into his eyes, your wonderful husband, who you won over with your love and purity of heart Jesus fucking Christ how can anyone be so fucking stupid? I've seen into your husband's soul, Kansas, and it isn't pretty. Or would you like him to do the things to you that he does to me. Push you up against the wall while he slaps you and calls you a dirty whore, and if you happen to whimper in pain he laughs and says bitch that's what you deserve, I should fuck you up far worse for all the pain you've put me through. Is that what you want? You should've run, girl, listened to everyone's advice, run far away from his ass while you still had the chance. Because now you're going to get hurt, and I won't even be the one to do it, me who you're so afraid of, who you glare at and cringe away from even now like I'm the epitome of evil. Not this time._


	3. Old Monster

_Voulant du Mal chercher la crème _  
_Et n'aimer qu'un monstre parfait, _  
_Vraiment oui! vieux monstre, je t'aime!_

"Le Monstre", Charles Baudelaire

You're not happy.

This isn't something you want me to see, but something I understand from the way you turn over onto your side facing away from me after fucking, hugging your pillow like a lonely kid. Like I'm the husband who shares a bed with you each night but will never know who you are.

Why do you keep on seeing me? At this point the only thing I can think of is that you see me as a kind of human punching bag, stress relief after a long day at the office. Someone you don't have to be nice to, don't have to pretend to love. You practically said as much last week, when I asked you straight out why, and you shrugged and said, I don't know, I guess I just feel relaxed around you. Then I said, aren't you going to ask me the same question? You snorted and said, I don't have to. I know your wife, remember? Look at her and look at me, I think the answer is obvious.

I lean over to get a better look at your profile as you lie there, eyes closed, waiting for me to leave. You look older than you used to, features sharper, last vestiges of teenage baby fat gone, etched out as if by acid. And god, Kathryn, you're more beautiful now than you ever were. What will you be like at forty, fifty? Your beauty is inhuman, monstrous. I should kill you now, as a service to humanity. Can't do it—I'd die too. And surely you must know this as well, and laugh inside at my weakness. What did either of us ever do but laugh at other people's weaknesses?

And the really terrible thing is, we could just go on like this. We could easily spend the rest of our lives like this.

I see my life stretch out. It is cold. I did this once before, and the solution was Annette. Because she was perfect and brave and good, and would save me from everything evil and cold in my life including myself if I could only just manipulate her into loving me enough.

I push your hair from your face and gently stroke your cheek. It feels wrong, sick, a sacrilege. Funny how fucking you and slapping you around never felt like a sacrilege but this does. Your eyes twitch and suddenly my stomach lurches, I can't stand it anymore.

So I speak into your ear the only words I can think of that might change it.

You yawn and mutter "that's nice, now please go away" into the hotel pillow.


	4. Betrayal

"_I love you," you tell me, and it feels like a betrayal. I remember when we laughed at such things. I remember when you were vicious and untrustworthy and said those words to everyone and anyone you thought might fall for it. I remember how you fattened them up with "I love you" like pigs before the slaughter...and how you belonged to me, simply, in the evenings._

_And how I belonged to you. Others had my body, my smiles and kind words, the privilege of claiming me as theirs in public. But you held in your hands the most precious thing I had, the knowledge of my secret corruption._

_I remember it so well, the day I finally decided to let you in. I was dating some guy whose name began with a C—who was it? Chad, I think—and seeing someone older, Rafaello, the new AP Spanish teacher, on the side. You had told me you were staying in that night. Usually Rafaello and I met at his house, but that evening, I took him to mine. Took him into my room and left the door a little bit open, as if by accident. Let you watch me as I tied his hands to the bed. Let you see as I rode him for hours. Let you see us do line after line of coke together, let you hear me sweetly reminding him of the blackmail power I had over him._

_Before that, you'd had your doubts, but you mostly acted like you bought my Mary Sunshine act. You'd tried to seduce me a few times, and, finding yourself politely and completely turned down each time, apparently put me on the back burner as you went off to pursue your other conquests. You grew as icily well-mannered towards me as I was towards you, but every once in a while, when you thought I wasn't looking, I'd see you giving me a long, hard, appraising look. And I wanted so badly to reveal myself to you, to take you in as my friend and ally—I'd been alone for so long—to take that risk. And so I did._

_After that, we spoke about all kinds of things. The first thing you did, as soon as Rafaello had gone, was to come into my room and demand that I give to you what I had given to him. I refused, naturally. You ran your fingers over my collarbone, over my breasts, and saw my skin flush despite myself. You tried to blackmail me with what you'd just seen. I pointed out that you had a known record of trying to seduce me, and I was known as a perfect little angel to everybody, and who did you think they were likely to believe? You nodded, defeated, and pulled away._

_And then you were on me, attacking me with biting kisses and searching hands, not the teasing touch of the seducer but the rough greedy grip of a desperate man. It was a side of you I wouldn't see again until years later, when you were already grown up and unhappily married to Annette. I responded in kind until you took your cock out, at which point I slipped away and showed you the door with a few sarcastic words. You were pissed about it, but you went and didn't whine, didn't try to beg me for sex. We both knew that the instant I fucked you, you'd gain ascendancy over me, according to the same bullshit societal rules that required me to hide from the world the activities that got you an enviable reputation as a playboy._

_The next day, we had our first real conversation, the first of many. You told me of your latest conquests, in pornographic detail. I laid my head in your lap and told you of my affair with Rafaello and how it started, and of my plans to befriend and ruin a sickeningly sweet teacher's pet that had been my main annoyance at the time._

_But you never let me in the way I did with you. I held nothing of my life back from you, but you always had that journal of yours, that black book full of thoughts you never let me see. I found out why only after your "high school sweetheart" had photocopied the thing and spread the copies all over school in order to destroy me. Record of your conquests, my ass. It started out that way, but over half the pages in there were about me. You'd recorded with stalker-like attention to detail the specifics of my cocaine habit, my sexual history, my subtle undercutting of any other girls who got in my way. It wasn't a collection of insults, no matter what Annette and the others thought—it was a shrine. I remember one entry in particular:_

September 16th. Sirens hurting my eardrums, ambulance peels away rushing from our house to the hospital because Kathryn's overdosed. Her mother says this isn't the first time. When I visit her there I will only be allowed to come as her brother. Is she deliberately torturing me? Probably. It doesn't matter. There is no god. So I say this only to you (here, where you can't see it): Kathryn, please don't die.

_By the time I read this, you'd already chosen somebody else. It was old news and no longer meant anything._

_But somehow, your words still helped give me the courage I needed to get clean._


	5. Restaurant

_and we were lovers, __now we can't be friends_  
_fascination ends_  
_here we go again_

"Not In Love", Crystal Castles_  
_

The restaurant is badly lit, with somber brown walls and candles on the tables. You tell me you've taken me here because the waitstaff are discreet, that this is where all your co-workers take their illicit lovers. When the waiter comes to our booth, the familiar banter he exchanges with you tells me you've been here before.

"So I assume I'm not your first extra-marital affair?"

"No, of course not."

The entrees are a long time in coming. "Goddamit," you mutter, twisting your napkin in your hands. "I was going to wait until dessert to do this, but I guess I might as well do it now. Seb...I don't think we should see each other anymore."

So why bring me to an expensive restaurant to tell me this? Why not say it at our hotel room, or via text message, or better yet just stop returning my calls? I want to strangle you, but my mouth twists automatically into its customary half-smirk. "So who's my unlucky replacement?"

"No one. I'm actually going to try to work on my relationship with Andrea."

I nearly spit out my wine all over the tablecloth. "Are you serious?" I ask, between belly laughs.

"_Yes_ I'm serious. Andrea's easily the best thing that ever happened to me. He's intelligent, kind..."

"I'm sorry. It's just that the idea of you turning into a decent wife is as ludicrous as—as—"

"As your marriage to Annette?"

"Touché."

At that moment the food finally arrives. We eat, don't really talk much. When we're finished you speak again. "I meant it, though, when I said we can't see each other after tonight. You know as well as I do that this sneaking around in hotel rooms is getting old fast."

And if this was a Hollywood romance, at this point I would take your hand in both of mine, look deep into your eyes, and tell you to get a divorce. But this is real life. And in real life getting even, avoiding humiliation, _winning_, is always the most important thing.

After dessert, you order an espresso. You go the bathroom, and when you come back you sit at my side of the booth, beside me instead of across from me. The waiter brings the espresso; you don't touch it, barely even look at it.

"Aren't you going to have some of your coffee?"

"It's cold outside. I don't really want to leave just yet."

Of course. I understand everything, now. I put my arm around your shoulders, feel your muscles tense up, then relax again. Then tense up again. Then relax again, slowly, bit by miniscule bit.

We stay that way for a long time.


	6. Need

_I cave, in the end. The pain gets to be too much. Neurotic pacing restlessness so intense I want to chew my own fingers off, alternating with a vicious depleted emptiness in my gut like I've just been punched. The effect is eerily similar to that of cocaine withdrawal. Andrea knows something's wrong but remains oblivious, or chooses to remain oblivious. In bed, I tell him to spank me. He gives me a couple of light taps. Not like that, I say, _harder_ dammit, I'm not made of glass. He hits me so hard I wince away automatically from the pain. Still I basically feel nothing; he's strong enough to deliver a hard blow but there's no hatred behind it. How sick it is that in the end it's the hate I want._

_That's why I call you, despite knowing you'll humiliate me for it: because it's you or the coke._

_Just tell me, Sebastian.  
_

_The chorus starts up again. Pathetic little bitch, look how much she needs him. As long as men wanted me (especially if I didn't really want them) it was all right. As long as I made money it was all right. But now this again. You make it better though, inadvertently, on the phone: "I knew you couldn't stay away. You're just too addicted to my cock." Oh yes, out of all the myriad cocks I've fucked sucked and otherwise played with I'm addicted to yours, because what? It's prettier? Because you know how to make me come? Well, you are quite the expert at sex. But I've gotten off with every single man I've been with since I started out as an analyst at Goldman. I picked them because they looked good and kissed well, told them what to do to me, and they did it and got me off. And I was able to fully enjoy it, because the day I got that job was the day I stopped fucking guys for social positioning reasons. It was also the day I decided, voluntarily, to go into NA. "Addicted," you say. What in the fuck do you know about my life? While you were spouting off apparently non-ironic "I love you"s to the blonde you'd known for practically five minutes, I was in rehab, then shipped off to an all-girl Catholic school where I quickly found another dealer, an unpopular Goth chick. The reigning popular girl found out and I had to suck her off to keep her quiet. I was her best friend in the world until they searched her locker on an anonymous tip and found a hollowed-out textbook filled with coke and lesbian porn photos. Soon after that my Harvard acceptance letter came in. I majored in economics, used all through college._

_On the taxi ride to New Jersey, I think of Andrea. I remember the words he spoke to me not long after we met, that made me decide to marry him: "I love you the way you are, Katerina. I'm a man, so yes, I'm attracted to you. But you are so much more than beautiful to me. All these superficial people—" he waved his arm out wildly to encompass all of the other guests at the party we were attending, and possibly all of humanity "—they call you the ice bitch, say you don't have a heart. But you do, I can see it, and I love you for it. A woman's beauty alone would never be enough to win me. I see beautiful women all the time, in my profession."_

_He thought that underneath I was really just a sweet girl._

_I'm thinking, I don't have to do this. I could tell the taxi to turn back. I could call my sponsor instead. She knows more about all the awful things I've done than anyone else in the world except you. I lied to her, though. I told her, I want to make amends for all the people I've hurt because of my addiction. The truth is, if I hadn't had drugs around to distract me part of the time, I would have done far worse. The taxi pulls up. Too late now. I feel like I'm outside my own body, numb and in trance, as I walk with measured steps toward the door. This, too, is reminiscent of my cocaine days._

_Tonight I'm a little cock tease, I put my tits in front of your face and push you away when you try to grab them, stroke you everywhere but where you want. Not to torture you (okay, yeah, to torture you), but above all to provoke one certain very specific kind of violence._

_Just tell me..._

_Tell me I'm not going anywhere Sebastian. Hold me down tell me I'm not going anywhere. It's a lie, I already know it's a lie. You'll let me go just like you always do. And if I stay, you'll leave: lovely wife etc. Then come back when your dick gets hard again, remembering how I'm a better fuck than your wife and possibly the best fuck you've ever had in your lifetime. It isn't enough._


	7. Protect Me

Is there a point to any of this?

You open the door then step back quickly, still playing coy it seems, your old ice princess bullshit, as if to make up for your shame at still wanting me more than your precious husband, as if any of it mattered at this stage. White lacy bra and panties—a blushing bride, how sweet. Pretty as ever, sexy as always. A distraction.

This is my real life: I go home every night to a woman who loves me, who I truly care about, who I regularly betray in the afternoons. Every night after dinner, she rouses me with affectionate kisses until I'm hard enough to want to take her into the bedroom. It isn't the stuff of my porno fantasies but it gets the job done. Afterward we talk...or, more and more often, we don't. Annette and I argue a lot these days. The kind of arguments that begin with a choked frustrated outburst on her part and escalate, not to screaming and throwing things, but to icy, isolated silence. She wants us to have a baby. Never truly happy in New York, without a career to keep her occupied and with no real desire to cheat, she needs one to take away the loneliness. She would've been happier staying in Kansas, a simple country wife. Instead she has me, her dream romance. Maybe she also thinks a baby will bring us closer together, I don't know. I used to think the woman I married was too intelligent for such cliches, but who can tell? We were always so romantic. Every summer I'd take her to a new place. Italy, Antigua, Costa Rica—anywhere but France. I wanted to make her happy and she was, she was. She told me so over and over again. Still says it on occasion, despite our current state of conflict. Never breathes a word of suspicion over my late nights, either. But the baby issue has increasingly made her bitter and resentful, a stranger. Maybe I should just give her what she wants, let her and the nanny raise it, spend even more time away from the house. It's a common enough template for Upper East Side marriages._  
_

I push you onto the bed, then turn away and put some music on. Placebo. Do you remember how I used to play this when we were teens? Whiny emo bullshit, you called it. And then you'd go into your room and play your own music at top volume—techno and hip-hop, usually—music to fuck strangers to. Coke whore crap, I said as I went in, ostensibly to tell you to turn it down, really to throw your vibrator on the floor and hold you down and finger you while you jerked my cock off until we both came, to your music, dammit.

_Protect me from what I want._

I was your distraction back then. Still am, I suppose. Your toy, as you called me once when we were teenagers and have reminded me countless times since.

And this is my real life: this hotel room, only this room. I sleepwalk through photo shoots of anorexic teen girls from the Midwest, waiting on me and my camera to turn them into the sophisticated femme fatales they aren't. Their bodies turn me on, but I never make a move. They are all so predictable. _Hi Mr. Valmont is it okay if I call you Sebastian? Hi Sebastian you're cuter than I expected I was expecting some creepy old guy. Do you think I look sexy like this? (strikes pose) My boyfriends always tell me I look sexy like this. But that's okay, if you don't like it. Have I seen you before at [insert over-hyped bar in Williamsburg or club in Meatpacking District]? No? Really? Oh, you don't go to clubs. Yeah, I'm getting sick of the club scene myself. By the way, I don't usually do nudes (giggles) but if you want to I can—sorry, I didn't mean it like that, I swear. _And then back home to the wife, the favored one. She used to tell me about her day when I got home. She doesn't do that much now, because she knows by now I'm not really interested. She does charity committees. All the shit you did back then because you had to, because your mother gave you no choice, she does sincerely. I should find it admirable but I don't. So instead we talk about nothing at all, the baby if we want to be miserable that night, otherwise books, TV shows, movies, where we should go on vacation next, endless rehashes of the days we first met. We go out a lot: nice restaurants, Broadway shows. Trying to rekindle the romance. I tell her I love her every night—that's why she still stays with me.

_Protect me from what I want._

You run your sharp nails along my inner thighs, kiss my neck and bite my earlobe, little teasing bites, whisper in my ear do you like this? You push me away then pull me in again, your movements sharp, your lips soft. I pull you by the hair to keep you in, close to me. Because I don't love you never even wanted you to be happy really but you're in my skin. _Incestuous_, that's the word for it. Not because once upon a time, our parents were each other's third husband and fourth wife respectively before divorcing again. But because I know you too well: the way you move when you're trying to seduce, the way you stretch out when you're just relaxing, your thoughts, your secret hatreds, your knowing stare, your exultant smile. Because I was in the next room when you brought all your other lovers home, and after you were through with them we'd sit in the living room together and fight over the remote and argue about who was the bigger slut. Because I was in the next room the last time you OD'd before leaving for college, hearing the silence and knowing it wasn't sleep, and when they'd started your heart up again and declared you stable enough to go home, I cornered you and yelled at you to give up that shit now, your mother might not care what drugs you do as long as you keep quiet about it but I fucking care, okay? And you sneered at me and told me that if I had to be perfect every day of my life I'd be a coke addict, too. And half of me wanted to kill you and the other half just wanted to fuck the shit out of you right there, but you still had a reputation to protect and you knew that I photographed girls so you wouldn't even take your top off in front of me, but none of that matters now does it so fuck me, Kathryn.

I shove my cock in you brutally, no attempt to start off slow, wanting you to feel that rush of sudden pain because this is how I know I exist. I whisper in your ear: fuck me, Kathryn. Harder. Throw it back the way I know you can.

Fuck me because I'm as much of a mess as you ever were. Fuck me because with or without you, my marriage is going to shit. Fuck me because I will never be a decent father. I thrust into you faster, feeling you lose control under me, all incoherent gasps and screams. Your voice goes higher and then higher and I know you're about to come now. I grab your hips and plunge in as deep as I can go.

It is meaningless.

I start choking you. I've done it before and you enjoyed it but the difference is, this time I don't stop. I feel your body go limp under me, still I don't stop. Your eyes are closed. It occurs to me you might be dead.

I check for a heartbeat, it's still there. I check for breathing: none. And this is what I feel: animal, visceral terror. Getting hit by a car was nothing compared to this. I want to save you bring you back before it's too late but I'm so scared I can barely breathe myself. I don't know what to do.

Pray to God, Annette would say.

You take a deep, shuddering breath and open your eyes. "Seb," you say softly. "That wasn't an accident, was it?"

"No."

You push yourself up, with some effort, into an upright sitting position. "'Fuck you do that for," you mutter. But your voice sounds wan and unconvincing. You aren't surprised. You aren't even particularly offended. And there is nothing in this scene to make me certain I won't try to do it again.

Protect me...


	8. Undone

_I ask you why. "I don't know," you tell me. A bullshit, cop-out answer._

"_Why didn't you finish the job?" I ask. I know what that question reveals, but I do not care anymore._

"_Same reason I started it." I could ask for elaboration but I don't, because I already know really. If it hadn't been you it would've been me. It's what was always at the heart of all our endless games, the insults, the flirtations, the sadistic power games we played out onto the bodies and reputations and hearts and lives of others._

"_You could still finish it if you wanted to," I tell you. "But I don't think it's me you want to hurt."_

"_You're right." You rummage in your pants pockets for your cell phone. "Say cheese!" I do._

_Yes Annette, I got your five messages. Yes, I know I'm missing the show. No, I wasn't in an accident. Yes, I'm perfectly all right. Let me show you how all right I am. Did you get the photo?_

_Blah blah blah on the other end. Crying. I can't make out the words but I'm sure it's something along the lines of, how could you _do_ this to me? I love you. In other words: blah blah blah._

"_Do you see now why I will always prefer her? Do you see now why our marriage was a sham from beginning to end?"_

_More blah blah._

"_It might make you feel better to believe that, but unfortunately, it's not. Really, Annette, I'm surprised at you. Look at all the models I photograph. If all I wanted was someone thinner than yourself, I could have pleasured myself with any of them. And yet, I didn't—ask anyone I work with. She was my only infidelity, believe it or not." I don't believe this. But I'm pleased with the answer—it's the kind of answer you give to a conquest. "Look closer. Look at the marks on her neck. Now do you understand?"_

_Something something vampire roleplay?_

_Irritated sigh. "No. Those marks are there because I nearly killed her a few minutes ago. I did it because she's a cold-hearted bitch and if I lose her again I will probably turn to drugs. The history we have—"_

_Loud and clear from Mrs. Kansas: "That's sick! That's obsession, not love."_

_I laugh out loud, take the phone from your hand and turn it off. And the sweet girl falls away like the paper-thin image she always was._

_You take my hand in yours and kiss it, an ironic gesture. Then your lips stay on my hand, and you fall to your knees, and it isn't ironic anymore. You look up, close to tears, silently begging me. Not for sex, for forgiveness. She is nothing. They are all nothing. Hurt me if you want to, fuck other men, take away my pride, even kill me like I nearly did to you. Just please—never leave._

_I close my eyes. I'm coming undone now, like I said I never would, like I always wanted to and never could. I cycle back through years of perfection, the student body presidency debates, Mother's charity events, the posture and comportment classes, and me wanting to get coked up and fuck some older guy in a dingy hotel or back alley somewhere because that was the closest thing I could envision to feeling alive. And then you came along, the devil, the tempter, coldly expert seducer, prince of the dark places, and every other girl wanted to reform you and make you feel love but what I saw in you was a vision of what I could be, if I was free. Career secure, no reputation to protect, I slept around and broke hearts without apology but you had already come and gone and there was no one left who knew me at all. And Andrea found me and looked into my eyes, and told me he could see the smile hidden there and it was a real one, a smile of happiness and not of cruelty. And I looked into his eyes, and I liked the vision of myself I saw there, a new me I'd flow into easily, like stepping from the townhouse out into the street, and all I had to do was kill the old one. I tried, Sebastian. I tried so hard. But the back alleys called me and I started fucking strangers again, and then you came back like I always knew you would. Tried to seduce me like I always knew you would. And I despised you and swore that I would break you, and I did break you. And here you are, marriage and sanity in shreds, on your knees before me and not even pretending it's some kinky BDSM sex game, and oh fuck, Sebastian, I'm in love with the broken pieces of you. I join you on the floor, both of us shivering now as we lie down and start touching each other again, slowly this time, gently._


	9. Mirror

_Later that evening, getting ready for bed, I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and it's like I can see you, coming up behind me. Andrea calls for me. I climb onto the bed and slip traitorously into his arms. He calls me his Katerina, his princess. I want so badly to hate him or at least be indifferent to him, like with all the others, but I can't. It doesn't change anything, though. The next morning, I call you on your cell phone. You're still at the hotel. I meet you at the county clerk's office in Manhattan, where we file our respective divorce papers._


	10. Dirt

We walk together back to the parking lot. Your head's held high as always, walking fast in black miniskirt and high heels, my dangerous love. New York girl born and bred, shopping at all the exclusive boutiques yes but it's the dirt of the city that draws you in deep, that scorches you like cigarette burns under all those pretty clothes, that ties you to me. I tip the valet extra and when you turn to go back to your car, I don't let go of your arm. We fuck in the Jaguar, the car air even more claustrophobic than our hotel. Then I pick an exit at random out of the city and we just go, just keep on driving. To hell with work. To hell with everything.

* * *

A/N: Special Prize, Round 2! I will write a commissioned story on any topic (except unironic Sebastian/Annette, I'm not that much of a masochist) especially for anyone who can answer the following question: where do [1st chapter of story] and [Kathryn's husband] live? Quel arrondissement?


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